The latest on California politics and government

January 27, 2011

Team Whitman wasn't the only thing missing from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies look back at the 2010 gubernatorial race, according to some attendees and observers of last week's confab.

The scarcity of women sitting on the panels at the annual day of campaign analysis raised eyebrows and inspired a bipartisan group of women working in California politics to produce a punchy video to air their complaints.

"Our goal is to put together something satirical to get our point across," explained Democratic communications consultant Robin Swanson, who was involved in the video.

The three-minute video, which stars a Ph.D.-holding female professional who quips "Is it 1960? Perhaps I should spend more time cooking meatloaf and baking cookies than studying cross-tabs," started popping up on Twitter and Facebook feeds yesterday afternoon, racking up more than 1,000 views overnight.

Swanson said the IGS line-up was the "final straw" in what she and others saw as a string of panels and conferences that excluded women political professionals from the discussion. But she called the Berkeley conference line-up -- which featured women in two out of 26 scheduled panelist spots -- "particularly egregious because there were so many women in leadership roles across California in 2010."

"As a woman who works in politics, I see other women doing work all the time and so when the conferences and these panels don't reflect that, it's just bizarre to me," Swanson said.

The video is posted below. Conference organizers have yet to respond to a request for comment on the line-up.